In 2010, Irene published an article in Business North Carolina on the Hague Convention and Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, entitled “Treaty Helps Bridge the Divide on International Child Abductions.”

Fred has been a supporter of Infragard since it was first initiated — he was the federal prosecutor for Charlotte on computer and intellectual property issues at the time. The North Carolina chapter is nationally recognized as especially dynamic and effective; it has 1,774 members.

Further information and registration for attendance can be found here.

The Coalition is not a rescue organization; it doesn’t take dogs and try to find new homes for them. Instead, volunteers work directly with the owners, providing respectful assistance, to elevate the human-animal bond and to improve the home the dog already has.

On Saturday, April 28, members of JMD volunteered to build a fence for a mixed breed dog named Greedy. For more information about the Coalition to Unchain Dogs, click here.

Click here to read the whole article.

Click here to read the whole article.

What do you do?
As we discussed last time (my previous blogs on this subject can be found here and here), preparation ahead of litigation is the best way to navigate the dangerous waters of electronic discovery. But not everyone has had the luxury of a well-schooled corporate attorney, a careful army of IT support personnel, and attentive staff who always do exactly what they need to. Very few individuals implement a document retention policy for their day-to-day life, and most small-to-medium (and quite a few large) corporations either don’t have the time and resources or the wherewithal to get their affairs in order on the off chance that litigation will come down the pike some day.

Don’t panic. Take a deep breath, and remember—it’s never too late to think ahead. The keys to successfully managing electronic discovery are Preservation and Limitation. Too many litigants focus on the latter—do we really have to spend all this time gathering all this stuff? Can’t we keep them out of our files? This reaction, while natural, is the wrong approach, because it puts the real goal—prevailing in the litigation with as low an overall cost as possible—second behind cutting corners for short-term gain. What many litigants do not realize is that if you fail to properly preserve your data, the gaps will often prompt the other side to pelt you with a laundry list of increasingly invasive discovery demands which will ratchet your costs up even higher than responding fully and thoroughly the first time. Worse, it could lose your case entirely—see my last post for a brief discussion of the terrors of spoliation, the idea that a jury can assume the worst from any documents it concludes have been improperly lost or destroyed.

Tackling the Problem
Any lawyer worth their salt will tell you when they are hired not to get rid of any documents that could relate to the case. Usually, this comes in the form of a “litigation hold” letter that sets out exactly what you do and do not need to preserve. But the discovery preparation should not end there. Expect (and demand) your attorney to sit down with you and go over your entire IT system, how it is set up, what you maintain, and how access is handled. At this stage, it is particularly important to identify the key users who are involved in the subject matter of the litigation.

This may seem like a pain, and if you are lucky, you will never know just how valuable it is and how much you are saving in the long run by tackling the problem as soon as litigation arises. If your attorney knows your system, he may be able to limit the scope of discovery right up front (potentially even aiding your case on the merits, not just saving costs), and he or she will be armed with the information he or she needs to strike back when Mr. Purple Face comes banging on the door. A lawyer who has the tools to tell the court exactly how much the other side’s demands are going to cost is far more likely to get those demands stricken or limited than one who comes in and can only say it will cost “a lot.” Similarly, when a certified computer expert comes into court ready to testify that he has a forensically gathered all the relevant information from all the key custodians, a lot of wind is going to go out of opposing counsel’s spoliation witch-hunt.

The Value of Preparing Ahead
If this doesn’t sound cheap, that’s because it often isn’t—the value of preparing ahead of litigation, having a document retention policy, and coordinating with your corporate counsel cannot be overstated. But this principle carries through to every stage of the litigation, and spending the money to do it right up front gives you the ability to head off snowballing costs down the road. All too often, a client told to gather documents opens a file cabinet, collects what’s in his office, maybe remembers an email or two, and sends it off to counsel, claiming that’s “all there is.” That path leads to massive discovery bills, hundreds of hours of lost time on your end, and maybe even a lost case at the end of the day. Faced with those prospects, any money spent up front is money well spent.

You can read the interview here.

One should begin this discussion by understanding the root claim supporting potential parental liability – negligence. Basic negligence requires: (1) a legal duty; (2) a breach of that duty; and (3) injury proximately caused by the breach. However, where in a typical claim for negligence a plaintiff seeks redress directly from the offender, here the claim is directed at a third party – the parent of the destructive child. Pursuing such a claim requires showing that a special relationship exists between the third party and the offender. Generally, two things must exist: (1) the defendant knows or should know of the third person’s propensities; and (2) the defendant has the ability and opportunity to control the third person at the time of the third person’s actions.

It is well-established in North Carolina and other jurisdictions that parents are (thankfully) not liable for the civil liabilities of their minor children solely by reason of their parent-child relationship. In fact, up until the early 1980s certain North Carolina cases arguably required specific involvement and/or approval by the parent of the child’s nefarious conduct in order to be held liable. Essentially, the child was viewed as a servant or agent of the parent and active parental participation at some level was necessary. Then, in 1982 the North Carolina Supreme Court chipped away at that parental protection and established a lower standard of care.

That year, in a case titled Moore v. Crumpton2, the Court encountered a tragic situation involving the June 1978 rape of a woman by a seventeen year old minor child. The plaintiff victim brought a personal injury action against the minor and his parents resulting from the crime. The evidence showed that the minor child suffered from several infirmities during his youth, but otherwise experienced a “comfortable and secure” home life. In his teenage years, the minor child began using various controlled substances and committed a few petty criminal offenses. As a result, his parents sent him to a private high school where he performed pretty well. They also consulted doctors, counselors and mental health professionals about their son’s behavior. None of the professionals who treated the minor child found evidence to suggest he was disposed to violent or dangerous behavior, even during early 1978. However, the minor child discontinued his counseling sessions. On the night at issue, his parents were out of town but made arrangements for him to stay with his grandparents. Prior to leaving for his grandparents’ home, but after his parents left town, the minor child obtained a large amount of whiskey from a friend, drank it, took some type of controlled substance, broke into the plaintiff’s home, and raped her.

The plaintiff claimed the parents should have exercised “reasonable care to control and supervise [their son] so as to prevent him from intentionally injuring others.” She asserted that the parents had notice of their son’s circumstances and historical conduct that required their efforts to ensure he did not injure others. The plaintiff further argued that this requirement served as the “legal duty” under the negligence standard. Thus, by not exercising reasonable care, the parents breached their legal duty owed to the plaintiff which proximately caused her injury.

The Court agreed to an extent. It held that a parent may be liable for not exercising reasonable control over a child if the parent (1) had the ability and opportunity to control his child and (2) knew or should have known of the necessity for exercising such control. However, applying that standard to the facts, the Court determined that the parents neither knew nor should have known of the necessity for controlling him. Although they were aware of his drug problems and other issues, the parents “had no recent information to indicate that an assault might occur or that [their son] might become involved in a forcible rape.” The Court further explained that neither parent had the ability to control him at the time of the rape and had made efforts to provide supervision in their absence. The plaintiff won her argument for the proper legal standard by which the defendant parents should be held. But, the Court disagreed with her belief that they failed to meet that standard, i.e., breached a legal duty owed to her.

Despite the variety of cases involving this issue that have matriculated through the legal system since the Moore decision, the North Carolina appellate courts have remained with the parental standard of care – albeit with some clarifications. For example, in one case a minor plaintiff sought personal injury damages from the father of an eight year old boy who struck the plaintiff in the eye with a golf club. The Court found no evidence to suggest that the defendant father should, by the exercise of due care, have reasonably foreseen that the child was likely to use a golf putter that way. The Court made clear that a parent is not an insurer of the safety of the child’s playmates. In a separate case, parents of a child accused of assault were sued for failing to supervise their child. The defendant parents claimed they should not be held liable for the crimes of their child. However, the evidence actually showed that the mother assisted the minor child in assaulting the plaintiff victim while the father stood by and refused to intervene. The court declined to protect the defendant mother who acted in concert with the minor child and the defendant father who ignored the plaintiff’s pleas for help.

The law recognizes that a parent is the first line of defense for the rest of the world when it comes to the actions of their children. Presumably parents have the greatest perspective and understanding about their children and their respective tendencies in interacting with others. Consequently, they are charged with exercising reasonable control over their children when they know (or should know) that there may be a problem. This standard exists without regard to whether the child’s act is intentional or merely negligence. However, for reasons described above, this responsibility is not limitless. There is a recognition that parents can only do so much. When one of my children give me a mischievous grin, I take some solace in that.

¹ This article solely considers a parent’s potential liability for the misconduct of a child.  Consideration of the principal liability of the child is a topic for another day.

² 306 N.C. 618, 295 S.E.2d 436 (1982).

Call 4ALL is a program that puts pre-screened Legal Aid clients in touch with attorneys from one of the following areas of law: private landlord/tenant, public and subsidized housing, Medicaid, disability and non-disability issues in Social Security matters, consumer collections, employee rights, custody, guardianship and simple estates. Call 4ALL attorneys volunteer to talk with clients through one-hour telephone interviews to provide advice or discrete services.

This year’s event fielded more than 8,648 calls.

The list will be published in the 2012 Spring edition of Litigation which is a supplement distributed with the May editions of Corporate Counsel and The American Lawyer magazines – publications of American Lawyer Media (ALM).

Each year, ALM polls Fortune 500 General Counsel and other company leaders on which law firms they rely upon for outside counsel. In addition, data was gathered from public records, legal and business publications, and commercial databases.